(Originally published at: http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/celebrating-the-success-of-wikipedia-in-wikipedia-summit-pune-2013)
Wikipedia Club Pune, a local community
based outreach user group in Pune has recently organized Wikipedia
Summit Pune 2013 to spread words about “Spoken Wikipedia”, a
project to add recorded audio for Indic language Wikipedia articles
which will help the disabled to access Wikipedia and “Bridging
Editor Gender Gap.” It was supported by Centre for Internet and Society, Wikimedia India Chapter, PAI International Learning Solutions and Kusuma Foundation. Here is a sumary of activities of this two day event.
I was in Pune from 12-13th January to attend Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013, a two day event organized by Wikipedia Club Pune to promote Wikipedia as an effective means of education, to empower and reach out to India, to bring the country under a spotlight through Spoken Wikipedia, and to bridge the gender gap of Wikipedia editors. Here is a summary of the activities.
Day 1:
12 January has seen more than 100 participants which includes students from almost 10 different schools, housewives, working professionals and free and open source activists. Myself from the A2K team of Centre fro Internet and Society, Sudhanwa Jogelker and Nikita Belavate from the Wikimedia India Chapter joined for this event. The opening ceremony was started with talks from Abhishek Suryawanshi, founder member of Wikipedia Club Pune, Sudhanwa Jogelkar, President of Wikimedia India Chapter, Rishi Aacharya, Principal, PAI International Learning Solutions, and social activist Mrs. Vibha.
Before the formal opening Abhishek spoke for a while about the Spoken Wikipedia project which is one of the main agenda of the two day event. He explained about the need of spoken Wikipedia, especially for people with disabilities and how effective it would be when it spreads in 20 Indic languages. In the past Wikipedians in Pune gathered and recorded articles in various Indian and international languages.
Sudhanwa Jogelkar, President, Wikimedia India Chapter introduced the chapter's role for Wikimedia movement to the audience. He spoke Chapter's in few of national events/projects like Wiki Loves Monument, GLAM project in Crafts Museum, Delhi and many other outreach events. There were few announcements about the chapter on the MoU to be signed from the chapter with district collector of Kanyakumari, Chapter being partner to Springfest, IIT, Kharagpur, Commons day celebration in February and GNUnify 2013, Pune.
Vibha, a social activist based in Delhi spoke about gender discrimination in many aspects of our social and professional life. Access to knowledge for free could bridge this and Wikipedia, being so known universally and accessed by millions of people every day could be the best platform for this.' says Vibha.
Rishi Aacharya, Principal of PAI International brought the vedic saying “Ya vidya sa vimuktaye” to explain the real meaning of knowledge which is free its existence in an Indian context. He spoke about open source movement and Wikipedia's part in it.
After the formal opening there was a Q&A session for the participants to clarify various questions they had about Wikipedia. Then they were explained about the 3 parallel sessions; An open discussion about Gender gap, Workshop for Indic languages and Spoken Wikipedia. Gender gap session was attended by many school students. Vibha and few more activists were coordinating this event. In the Workshop for Indic languages and Spoken Wikipedia Wikipedians helped participants for the workshop with basic editing and the participants edited Marathi and Hindi Wikipedia. Articles from various medical subjects of common interest were chosen. There were 3 medical professionals to support with the medical terminologies for editors contributing to Marathi and Hindi Wikipedia.
At the end of the day there were separate wrap up tracks to summarize the learning of whole session. All of the participants gathered together to educate each other about the work they have done. Many of the participants spoke about their experience and learnings. Plans for the next day was announced. Wikipedians gathered for a group photo and socialized after the closing talks.
Day 2:
Second day of Wikipedia Summit Pune was a sequel of the activities which happened in the first day.More than 40 students took part in this session. Vibha, Srishti and team were coordinating the gender gap track. Many topics related to Gender Gap, gender based discrimination, Role of gender gap in occupation, Gender gap in Wikipedia, Participation of Woman editors on Wikipedia were discussed.
Participants of the Spoken wikipedia session worked on the articles on Hindi and Marathi Wikipedia and moved them from sandboxes to article namespaces. After all of the articles were created they recorded them. They formed groups of 3-4 members and worked together. One of them would search information mainly from the English Wikipedia articles and some of the available Marathi (or Hindi), some other would translate and the other member would record it using a mobile phone. That was a great team effort.
Over 25 voluntary organizers joined hands for making this a success. No of participants were around 120. At the end of the day participants from both the sessions gathered. Many of the participants and organizers shared their experiences and learnings. The program was concluded with socializing, taking group pictures, promises to stay in touch and taking active part in more Wikipedia activities.
Quick links:
Wikipedia Summit Pune: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune
Wikipedia Club Pune: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune
Pictures: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune
Spoken Wikipedia Project: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Spoken_Wikipedia_-_India
Pune Club facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikipediaClubPune